


Survive For Me

by DYLANFLOWER



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Relationship(s), Tommy POV, s3e02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22395118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DYLANFLOWER/pseuds/DYLANFLOWER
Summary: “I love you, Tommy Shelby. I love you. Please know it.” She breathed haltingly, the blood from the cavity in her chest slowly drowning her. “Survive for me.” She whispered, her hand sliding limply from his face.An exploration of what happened between the end of episode 2 and the start of episode 3, after Grace dies. Tommy's POV.
Relationships: Grace Burgess/Tommy Shelby
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

“Get a fuckin’ ambulance _now_!”

The words were spewed with an urgency Tommy Shelby felt in his veins, but he could barely hear them over the roaring in his ears. His vision dimmed and the world took on a grey-scale quality, muffled like his ears were, numb like the floor felt when it hit his knees.

All of this, Tommy observed in the periphery.

At the forefront was the sight of Grace; beautiful, shining Grace; Grace who was his sunlight… Fading in his arms. Her warm skin dulled to ash as the blood drained from her face, and despite the cotton stuffed in his ears, he heard with crystal clarity the ragged intake of breath into her punctured lungs.

He barely noticed as he sank to the polished wood floor, all of his attention directed solely to keeping her in his arms, to the warm weight of her pressed against his chest. Her pristine silk gloves brushed against his suit jacket as she closed her hand around his bicep, almost like a reflex. It distantly reminded him of the way Charlie’s tiny hand had grasped his finger when he was still a babe, of the way his fallen comrades had shuddered in the mud in France in their final moments.

As he pressed his lips to her cold, damp forehead, he drew his hand from the hole in her chest (useless to press against the wound, to push the life into her, to cause her any more pain than was necessary) up to cradle her head like he had so many times before. But this time, when we drew back to look at her fully, he saw that his hands were wet with warm blood.

This was not a sight Tommy was unaccustomed to. He had studied the way fresh blood soaked into the skin and made stark the ridges of his fingerprints countless times before, both in France and in business. It often brought dark waves of power, victory and remorse; but now? The sight of Grace’s lifeblood staining his hands sent daggers of icy fear shooting through his veins, and the hand began to shake.

“Grace?” He whispered hoarsely, cradling her jaw anyway, brushing her golden waves back from her face and looking into her dark blue irises.

He saw lashes thick with tears that were pooling in her eyes, that same primal fear looking right back at him. “Grace, Grace, Grace…” He whispered, chanted, as his own eyes filled and brimmed over.

The thud of footsteps running over to them drew his attention and he looked up sharply, ready to defend his dying wife if he had to. But it was just Polly coming to help them, and he noticed his brothers were already taking care of the threat. He took his bloody hand from Grace’s face, stretched it out to his Aunt who had been more of a mother to him for longer than he could remember. Reaching for her, reaching for help, for a tether in this fucking tempest of hurt and fear.

She took one look at Grace, at the blood staining her dusky pink gown, and when her eyes flicked to his they were filled with dark certainty. _It’s happening, Tommy._

But she quickly turned on her heel and ran out to the main entrance hall, obviously intending to guide the ambulance to them.

When Tommy turned his attention back to Grace, she lifted her slender arm up so she could cup his jaw, an action that must have taken an incomprehensible strength and caused her yet more pain. But as her silk-clad fingers stroked his cheek, Tommy’s eyes flickered closed to savour it, to savour this final display of love for him in these final moments. “Grace, Grace, Grace…” He stuttered again, his mind stuck on a loop.

“I love you, Tommy Shelby. I love you. Please know it.” She breathed haltingly, the blood from the cavity in her chest slowly drowning her. His eyes fixed on hers again.

“I know it, Grace. I know it.” He assured her, nodding his head, his voice the smallest and most broken he’d ever heard it, catching on the last word.

“You must-“ Grace exhaled sharply in what might have been a cough, her torso heaving in his arms, “You must take care of our Charlie.”

“I will. Of course I will.” Tommy’s lips trembled around the words, “Don’t speak love, save your strength.”

She smiled, a weak thing, and in her eyes he clearly read her thoughts; _my time is already up_.

“Survive for me.” She whispered, her hand sliding limply from his face.

He nodded frantically, catching her hand in his. “Grace…”

And then her sparkling eyes rolled in her head as her eyelids closed, and he couldn’t feel her gasping for breath anymore.

***

“Tommy? Tommy –”

“Fuckin’ Christ, he’s lost it now, Pol.”

“Arthur, leave it. Tommy? Love-”

Tommy jolted back to awareness as though he’d been slapped.

Aunt Polly was tugging on his shoulders, pulling him back from where he was slumped over Grace’s body. Her head lolled lifelessly in his arms as he curled protectively around it.

He didn’t remember her arriving, nor the paramedics that he sensed were anxiously hovering nearby. Desperate to save a life for a Shelby, but terrified to rip one away from his dying lover, too.

“You’re too late. So just fuck off.” His voice was rough as if he’d been chain-smoking through the night. Nobody moved.

“I told you to _FUCK OFF!_ ” He bellowed, lifting himself from Grace to glare at his audience. One of them held his hands up, as if in surrender, and they backed off.

“Just go.” Polly confirmed quietly, and then they were gone.

“Tom –”

“-And you, too. Leave us. L-leave me.”

“I’m not just going to leave you here with her body, Tom. Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” Polly pleaded.

“It’s not her- She’s not… Just leave us, please.”

“No.” She replied defiantly.

Tommy felt the anger that always dwelled within him rising to a crescendo, but abruptly it dissipated and left him weak. Tears swelled in his eyes once again.

“Pol.” He said hoarsely.

He looked back down to Grace and saw that a pool of her blood had formed a black puddle around them. Pink-red blood stained the edge of her jaw and the tip of her chin. Where his hands had been.

The metaphor was too much to bear, and he started to quake where he sat. Not knowing what to do with his hands that stained everything he touched, he grabbed a fistful of his own hair and let the sobs overtake him.

This time, when Polly crouched to encircle him in her arms, he let her. He leaned into the embrace and cried wetly into the crook of her neck in a way he hadn’t since his own mother had died. Every shuddering exhalation felt like a scream of _help help help_.

“Come now, Tom.” She whispered, and he felt Grace’s lukewarm body being pulled away from him. He gripped Polly tight and let them do it. He didn’t think he was physically capable of tearing himself away from his Grace, so he let his family take her from him.

He was distantly reminded of a poem by Keats that he’d always believed to be senseless before now, _Isabella_. It seemed less so now. He could palpably recognise in himself the kind of insanity and grief that would lead someone to stay by their loved one’s body until they withered and died themselves.

But he’d made a promise to Grace, in the feverish heat of those final moments. He’d promised to survive, to look after Charlie.

He’d promised.

***

The first night, Tommy fell into an exhausted blackness beside his son, in his marital bed.

Charlie had been confused. Far too young to understand death yet, far to young to have to.

_“Mama… For story?” He’d blubbered helplessly, using all of his concentration to remember his words._

_“No. No story tonight, son.” Tommy replied numbly, “Go to sleep.”_

_Tommy was angry with himself for being so cold. If Grace were here, she’d have said the words in light, feminine tone, she’d have brought her hands to her face in imitation of a pillow, closed her eyes and mimed snoring, and he’d have giggled and copied her._

_Instead his eyebrows drew down into a frustrated frown as he shook his head violently, “Mama for story.” He demanded._

_“No, Charlie.” Tommy replied, and he pulled his son into his chest, drew the covers over the pair of them, and held his sniffling son against his chest until sleep took them both._

It didn’t get any easier come morning.

“Pa… Where Mama?” Charlie whispered into his chest as the sunrise turned the room a sombre orange colour.

“Mama’s not coming back, Charlie. I told you last night.”

“Not… Back?” He copied, not understanding.

“No Mama.” Tommy repeated.

“Mama…” Charlie begged, crying again.

Tommy felt a despair so deep it overwhelmed him. He wanted to just punch the child into silence like he could his other problems, and then the guilt he felt for thinking that yanked on him so that the despair was a physical pain in his heart and his head.

_I need you here, Grace. To make him understand_.

The irony was not lost on him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after...

Charlie snuffled against Tommy’s chest as he began to wake for the second time that morning. He had woken at dawn to ask for his Mother, and then cried himself into a hot and sweaty doze when it was clear she wasn’t coming.

Tommy had just pulled him close and watched him breathing. It was strange to him that so many breaths had passed, and would continue to pass, even after their life source, his purpose, had been torn away. He focused on his own breath, on the slow rise of his chest and then the dip that followed, and wondered why it was _her_ breath that had stopped, and not his own. It seemed like the universe had fucked up, made some stupid bloody mistake that had left him still standing and _her_ gone.

His grim thoughts were interrupted by Charlie’s flickering eyelids. His gaze instantly found his Father’s, and he stared up at him with a dark hollowness that hadn’t been there yesterday. It didn’t suit his little face, seemed at odds with the chubby red glow in his cheeks and the snot trailing from his button nose. Yes. A mistake had most definitely been made.

“Morning, Charlie.” Tommy whispered. It took a great deal of courage to do so, and he feared that once the moment had broken his son would dissolve into tears again. Instead he merely blinked back at him, and then turned his face to stare at his Mother’s picture on the bedside table.

A hollow silence followed Tommy’s words. It was as though Charlie had gone numb to any feelings at all. Perhaps that was what children did when they grieved, just turned the feeling off. Tommy wished he could do the same.

He thought back to when his own Mother had died. He’d been silent as a mouse, merely answering when spoken to but not initiating any interaction himself. He remembered feeling a bone-deep exhaustion. He’d wanted to join in with his friends who were playing in the fields, but couldn’t find the strength to stand up. Couldn’t find the strength to move his face into any expression at all. But he’d been hurting inside. He remembered the flayed-out feeling all too well.

Tommy hoped that Charlie didn’t feel that same pain now. He was much younger than Tommy had been when his own Mother passed, so maybe it wasn’t the same. Maybe.

“Right.” Tommy sighed as he sat up in the bed, reaching for a cigarette beside him. “I suppose we’d better be off for breakfast, eh, Charlie?” He lit the cigarette easily, finding as much comfort in the muscle memory as he did in the smoke itself. It seemed better, to taint his still-breathing lungs with the darkness inside of him. He wasn’t pure like her.

Charlie hadn’t moved, simply staring blankly at the picture on the table. It was of all three of them, Tommy’s arm around his wife and Charlie in her arms. When the photograph had been taken, Tommy had hoped it would help them to remember him when he inevitable got shot or stabbed or fucking blown to pieces. He never imagined _he_ would be the one left behind.

“Charlie? You hungry?” He brushed his hand over Charlie’s forehead, combed his fingers through his curly soft hair. Soft like hers.

Charlie shook his head, shook his hand off.

“Not hungry? Not even for some jam?” Tommy joked weakly, resting his hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“No!” Charlie shouted suddenly. He quickly burrowed beneath the bed covers, hiding from Tommy altogether.

_Christ_. Tommy had no idea how to deal with kids, how to comfort them, how to discipline them. Didn’t know whether to tell him off for his rudeness or hug him or leave him altogether.

What would _she_ do?

Tommy balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray beside him, and pulled the blanket over his own head.

“Now is that any way to talk to your own Daddy?” He tried for humour again and could just imagine her doing the same.

He could vividly picture the time he had walked in on a similar scene, when he’d returned home late in the evening to find both she and Charlie under the covers of this very bed. Her small pale feet had poked out from beneath the blanket as she’d sung sweetly to Charlie inside his ‘fort’. The memory was still crystal clear in his mind, the curve of her heel so vividly innocent and untainted that it caused a pain in his chest. He wished desperately that it would always be so clear in his mind as now. That it wouldn’t fade with time.

Now, Charlie sat with his head under his hands, curled in on himself and pressed into the mattress. He ignored his Dad’s jest completely.

“Hey, Charlie?” Tommy tickled the small of his back where his pyjama top rode up, eliciting an involuntary giggle, “Why don’t we eat breakfast inside our fort, eh?” He suggested hopefully.

Charlie twisted his head to look at his Father, at his black hair scuffed up by the blanket over his head, a crooked grin on his face.

He nodded shyly, cheeks still red and snot drying on his face.

“Come on then, let’s get cleaned up. We can bring some toast back to bed with us.” He promised.

Charlie seemed to resist at first, but gave in when his Dad held his hand out towards him. He closed his tiny palm around his Dad’s rough trigger finger, and together they climbed out of their fort to face the day.

\---

The pair of them stopped dead in their tracks when they entered the kitchen. Sat at the wooden table twiddling a cigarette between her fingers was Aunt Polly. She hadn’t noticed their arrival, instead staring out the window into the distant fog as though she’d been there for hours.

Perhaps she had. Perhaps she’d been there all bloody night.

“Pol?” Tommy asked, his voice coming out sharp with surprise.

She jolted around in her chair, shocked out of her reverie.

“Ah! My boys,” She smiled at them, but it was forced, and her eye makeup was smeared where she’d obviously rubbed at her sore eyes throughout the night. She’d changed into a new dress, rather than her ball gown from the night before, but hadn’t found the time to remove the makeup, “Can I get you a nice cup of hot, sweet tea?” She asked, stubbing out her cigarette.

“No thank you, we’re doing find on our own.” He said pointedly.

He turned and headed towards the sitting room instead, wanting to avoid talking about anything with Polly just now. He couldn’t face the therapy session she would inevitably try to deliver to him. Right now, his sole priority was making him and Charlie breakfast. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of anything else, past or future.

On approaching the sitting room, he spotted two slumped figures in matching suits lying prone on his sofas. The ones she had picked out because she loved that exact tone in the wallpaper. He remembered her pleased giggle when he'd agreed to the extortionately priced fabric, her eyes... No. Don't think of it.

Instead he focused on the sleeping drunkards dirtying his sitting room.

“Oh, Christ.” He stopped and considered just retreating back under the blankets with Charlie for the rest of the day.

“Tommy!” Arthur responded, sitting up roughly from where he’d clearly passed out. “Tommy, Tommy, how are you doing?” He bellowed through to them, pulling John up to standing too.

Oh God. The Shelbys were obviously planning a full-on ambush this morning. An ambush of concern and coddling and fucking _help_ that he didn’t need or want. Relentless. Constantly fucking there, a reminder of the business that needed tending to, of the _business_ that had caused this in the first place. The _business_ that had been the cause of her end.

At once he felt suffocated by it, by this awful bloody situation, by their fucking concern. Clearly no one believed he could get through this himself, that he could take care of his own _child_ by himself.

His temper smashed through the roof without him consciously realising it had.

“RIGHT!” He shouted. Charlie’s hand clenched around his and he backed away so that he hid behind his leg.

“OUT! All of you. Out of my house. NOW!” He bellowed. This was not Small Heath. Not their back-street bloody gambling den. This was his home. His and Charlie’s. The home _she_ had built for them, and the Shelby brothers were not fucking welcome. Especially not now.

“Tommy!” Polly ran through from the kitchen.

“Alright, Tom, just calm down, alright? Just-”

“No I will not CALM DOWN,” Tommy cut John off, “Just go home to your own fucking families and leave us be.”

Tommy bent to scoop up Charlie and hold him close to his chest. His son tucked his head under his chin and curled his fingers into his shirt.

Silence followed.

“I will be in contact when there is business to be done. For now, I just need some fucking peace and quiet. Alright?”

“Tommy, you need help. We need to arrange the funeral and-” Polly began.

“No! I don’t want to talk about the fu-” Tommy’s voice choked off suddenly. A lump rose in his throat, sore already from the shouting. The Funeral. _Her_ fucking Funeral. As if such a thing could be a possibility.

Her body was barely cold and they already expected him to be arranging her funeral?

Fuck them.

“Just get out.” He said coldly. This was the voice he used to threaten people, the one he used when he began to reach for his cap.

The three of them looked at eachother before silently agreeing to leave.

“Alright. But you just pick up the phone and we’ll be here. Alright?” Arthur insisted.

“Alright.” Tommy agreed, if only to get them to leave.

As they headed towards the door, Tommy carried Charlie into the kitchen. He placed him down on the wooden servants’ table and kissed his head. Breathed in the sweet, infantile scent of him.

The door slammed shut, and the silence that followed was a bitter one.

Alone at last.


End file.
